Vacuuming gravel in planted aquarium?

[alexv1n]

I'm slowly moving into the well planted aquarium domain. My 55 gal tank has quite a few plants now and now I have a question. How do people clean gravel once you have a lot of plants in there? I mean, I still have some fish in the tank, which I would like to keep (currently about 30 danios and 6 otocinclus - I'll give away some danios when they grow up a little). I have about 20 different plants which makes gravel cleaning quite difficult. I wonder what to do when I finish planting the tank... Any ideas?

P.S. Sorry if this topic has been discussed already. Couldn't find it in the archives...

[125gJoe]

http://gordon.sourcecod.com/images/flagicons/american_flag.gif
You can go to PetSmart.com and look at the vacuums they offer.
Do you have a Python for water changes? That product is nice to have... I have that one and use an air pump operated vacuum made be Marineland. With the air pump, you can vary the flow.

As fas vacuuming, just do it they way you would without plants.
Vacuum around the plants... It's a bit more tedious..

[carpguy]

I don't do the whole gravel churning bit, just a simple cleaning.

I popped the hoover tube off the vac and just use the hose. Its smaller and easier to maneuver with a stronger and more concentrated pull, sucks up whatever happens to be lying about from an inch or so away. Anything left behind is plantfood. Don't think "fishpoo", think "mulm" :D .

[RTR]

I'm w/carpguy - all I do is surface skim without disturbing the gravel in areas where there is not solid planting - such as under large swords. There is no reason to disturb the gravel in planted tanks.

[125gJoe]

http://gordon.sourcecod.com/images/flagicons/american_flag.gif
Ooops, I'm not using a middle layer of Laterite....
You don't want to disturb that Laterite... So, just skim the surface of the substrate without uprooting it.

I'll try and get that "air vac" in use posted here as a pic..

[125gJoe]

http://gordon.sourcecod.com/images/flagicons/american_flag.gif
Here's a couple pics of the vacuum....
A fine mesh bag holds the debris.

http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL59/715239/1510346/23022589.jpg

No water leaves the tank... You just skim the surface of the bottom, It's a good vacuum to use between water changes when you don't want to use the Python.

http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL59/715239/1510346/23022570.jpg


........Hmm.. the pics came out good enough to also post this in "Freshwater Products and DIY" forum... :)

[bobalston]

Guess I would like to take the minority opinion. I have a 55 gallon tank, pretty heavily planted. Initially, I also vacuumed the gravel where I could get to it. Now I don't. I do regular water changes and fertilizer additions. I also add root tabs for swords. As a result I have had two species of plants bloom, one twice, in the last couple of months.

Bob
:p

[alexv1n]

I found a rather interesting article on algae control which also mentions that cleaning gravel causing as little disturbance as possible is beneficial because it doesn't make the phosphorus from the root tablets coming into the water column where it can be consumed by algae. Anyway, I thought I'd share the link: http://www.cam.org/~tomlins/algae.html